Dead in Joburg
by Mad Crocuta
Summary: No one knows where the infection started, but it's spread across the world. From Asia to America, from Europe to Africa. Now four South African survivors must fight from the dead city of Pretoria, to evacuation from Durban... If it's still there.
1. The Flats

Left 4 Dead: Dead in Joburg

Campaign 1 - Pretoria

Part 1 – The Flats

Note: This is my first story posted up here, so if it's not good, my apologies. Still, leave your reviews, be they praise or criticism. I'm always looking to improve!

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There was no sign of life in the city of Pretoria, save for the occasional spat of gunfire from some isolated corner of the city, or perhaps an inhuman howl marking that the Infected had found their prey. The city, for all intents and purposes, seemed like a wasteland where life was snuffed out without thought or mercy. This was not the case, however, in a suburb in the northeastern part of the city. Four survivors, armed to the teeth, were slowly making their way down the street, their eyes peeled and alert for any signs of the "Infected" or supplies vital to their escape.

The person in front, a middle-aged man in a torn windbreaker jacket and jeans, stopped suddenly. "Hold on. We should check this building and see if there are any supplies," he said in a voice peppered with a Sotho accent. He pointed to a two story building

"Sounds like a good idea, David," the man behind him said, a tall Afrikaner with a black raincoat said. He moved ahead, aiming the assault rifle he'd taken from a dead soldier at the open doorway. The entry hall was a complete mess, with dried blood splattering the walls and a number of corpses littering the place. It appeared to be a of some kind, likely middle-class from the way the carpet and walls looked (before they had been covered in blood, of course).

"Hey, I think this is the flat building where the next safehouse is!" the Afrikaner exclaimed cheerfully, jogging further into the building, moving away from the group. Just as he rounded the corner, however, he heard a familiar growl, and only had time to turn before he was pounced by a Hunter. "Oh fuck, get him off me!" he yelled, just barely holding the Hunter back with both hands. The Infected looked barely human, it's lips curled back over rotten teeth into an angry snarl, spittle flying from its mouth onto the unfortunate man underneath it.

"Hendrick! Shit, a Hunter has him!" David growled, charging into the building to rescue his friend, who the Hunter was trying its best to tear apart. A quick burst from his police-issue submachine gun knocked the Infected off of Hendrick, and another burst finished it off. With a sigh of relief, David walked over to Hendrick and offered a hand. "You run off like that, you're likely to get killed," he said, cracking a soft grin.

Hendrick looked up and took the older man's hand, climbing to his feet. "Well, I gotta give you something to do, old man," he cracked back. It was then that the other two members of the party managed to find them.

"Are you two alright?" one asked, a short-haired woman who held a shotgun tightly in her hands, showing the comfort of someone who was used to guns and fired them often.

"Fine and dandy, Mandi," Hendrick said, still sporting his trademark grin. The woman rolled her eyes, hating the way her shortened name rhymed with 'dandy'.

"Alright, come on you all, we're almost to the next safehouse on the map," the fourth of the survivors said, a Zulu man, apparently in his thirties, with a hard gaze and a distinctive, if long-healed, scar on the left side of his face.

David pointed behind him, towards a nearby staircase. "It won't hurt to search the building for ammunition or medical supplies." He was softspoken, the leader of the group and the one best at quelling any argument that broke out between the other three.

Tau nodded. "Okay. Well, we should stick together nonetheless. The hunters always seem to pick off anyone who leaves the group." He had learned this very early on, after he'd watched one go after a fleeing man who'd straggled behind the crowd; it had been difficult recognizing him after the Infected had finished with him. Without another word, Tau leveled his handgun and moved towards the stairs at a careful, calculated walk. The staircase was wide and carpeted, with the luxury of a handrail and even stairwell lights. Once he came to the second floor, he found that the power had gone out, and with the rain outside there was no light coming in. With a grunt, he flicked his pistol's flashlight on and moved forward.

The hallway was relatively free of the carnage that marked the foyer downstairs, though most of the doors were marked with yellow police tape, as if they'd been trying to quarantine the infected inside. This neighborhood was one of the last ones hit with the infection, so that was a very real possibility. Still, Tau noticed no sounds coming from the rooms. Had the infect simply died? Word of mouth (or pencil, since all information came from writing they'd found on the walls) said that the rage disease was a form of rabies, always fatal and causing those infected to try their best to kill everything around them before they died. He shook his head, banishing anymore speculation from his mind, and pressed on, with the other three right behind him.

"So where's the next safehouse at? After this one, I mean," Mandisa, or 'Mandi' as she was called by her three comrades, asked. Like Tau, she flipped her flashlight on, though this one was taped underneath the barrel of her shotgun.

"I don't know. The writing at the last one said there would be more information here. I guess we can hope whoever wrote that made it here," David replied. "It looks like there's a park up ahead, though. We should probably go through it; I bet it's safer than the streets are." The aging man shook his head sadly. It was hard getting used to the idea of people behaving like monsters, attacking and killing their friends and families in the streets for no reason other than sickness-induced rage.

Hendrick held up the rear, looking behind them to make sure something like a Smoker, Boomer, Spitter, or Jockey didn't sneak up behind them. "The evac station is at the National Zoo, isn't it?" He'd seen some writing on the walls of their last hideout that the military was holding out for a couple days more so that survivors could attempt to get out of the city alive. They'd said that people were gathering at the zoo, waiting to be airlifted out by helicopter. None of the four knew if it was true or not, but there didn't seem to be any better way to get out short of walking that they knew about.

Soon, Tau came across a room with the door ajar. "Hey, there's something up here," he announced, before moving inside. The room was the typical flat, with a sitting area, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. None of that was worth any interest, but in the kitchen there were a couple bottles of pills. Most of them were emptied, but two looked like they hadn't been opened yet. "Here, catch," he said, picking up one bottle and tossing it to Mandi with a grin on his face. He kept the other for himself.

The bedroom door was also open, and inside there was a dead body, lying on the bed with a gun still in his hand. From the looks of things, he had decided to take his own life, rather than become one of the undead. "Well… That's just depressing…" Hendrick mumbled, moving into the bedroom. He picked up the pistol, a SIG P220, and stuffed it into the belt of his khakis. A quick search underneath the bed revealed a stash of ammunition to him, too. "Hey, we got some pistol ammo down here, and some shotgun ammo. Nothing else, though." He grabbed a few clips for himself, and made way for Mandi to get some shells for her shotgun and for Tau to get some pistol clips himself.

About that time, what sounded like the howl of the damned erupted throughout the apartment. "Oh shit, how did they find us?" David growled, readying his submachine gun. Already he could hear footsteps pounding down the hallway, moving in their direction. "Everyone get back!" he yelled, slamming the door shut and locking it. He knew from experience that a wooden door wouldn't hold back the inhuman fury of the infected, but it would slow them down and the doorway would create a chokepoint for the four of them to concentrate their fire at.

One of the infected slammed into the door, and soon after several more followed. Suddenly, the wooden center of the door broke, and a gray-skinned armor shot through, clawing back and forth for something to grab hold of. Tau opened fire at that instant, letting of a couple of shots with his pistol. They hit home both times, spraying more blood onto the door. Whoever the arm belonged to screamed incoherently, but didn't stop. More slams came, and then the door fell off the hinges.

The four survivors opened fire in that instant, Tau with his pistol, Mandi with her shotgun, David with his submachine gun, and Hendrick with his assault rifle. They created a hail of lead, cutting down the briefly-stunned horde before it could rush inside to kill them. "I'm reloading!" Tau reported, pulling one of the pistol clips he'd got from the bedroom out and slipping it into his handgun with the deftness of someone who'd gotten used to guns very quickly. He cocked the gun and leveled it within a second, then started shooting again.

Another couple seconds and the tide slowed to a trickle of just one or two zombies, and they were picked up easily enough. The corpses of the horde lay in a pile by the door, none of them having made it more than a couple feet into the flat. "Stupid bastards. You'd think they would realize that was suicide," Mandi said, pushing shells into her shotgun to replace those she'd spent.

"That's implying that they think at all," Hendrick replied, slinging the assault rifle over his shoulder and stepping over their corpses. "I heard they have a… what do you call it? A hive mind. They all think together. That's why they move in hordes." He'd heard it over the television, some 'expert' who'd developed this theory back when the infection was spreading across America like wildfire. It had only hit Africa **after** it hit America, which had got it from Asia, or so he'd heard.

Tau rolled his eyes, falling behind the younger man. "That's ridiculous. How would they communicate? No, they're just running on instinct. They can hear us or smell us, I think. Somehow they know we are not one of them."

David moved up to the front, his preferred position in their formation. "We can discuss how they act when we get to the safehouse," he said in his typical grandfatherly way, neither sound too soft nor too hard on the two. He smiled softly and pressed on. The group made their way through the flats, picking off lone zombies as they went. The building was packed with the infected, just as one would expect it to be, but luckily they didn't come across any large groups like the last horde they'd killed.

The flats proved to have more in the way of supplies than their initial find. The military had used the foyer on the opposite side as a strong point, and though it hadn't helped them at all, the supplies they left behind were more than useful to the four survivors. There was ammunition and even a handful of medical kits that hadn't seen any use. David and Hendrick both took one for themselves, while everyone grabbed more ammunition. There were even a couple of vending machines, and even though they didn't work, a couple of whacks with a shotgun stock cracked them open, spilling their contents.

Hendricks, after grabbing a couple more clips for his rifle and a medkit, headed over to a corkboard with notices and even a map posted on it. "Oh look, it says that there's another safehouse in the hospital. Mark that down on our map, Mandi." Mandi had the best eye for maps, and they all trusted her skill in reading one. She did as told, then stuffed the map back down into her backpack.

"I'll go ahead and shut the door. We can rest for one hour, and then we have to keep moving," David announced, shutting the steel door behind them and sealing it with a bolt. "Hey Tau, give me a package of noodles and a bottle of water." Tau tossed him what he wanted, and then he sat down on a nearby couch, eating the noodles raw. Looking around, he saw Hendrick huddle up in a corner, cradling his rifle like it was a child. Tau, rather than relax, only paced back and forth, an expression of worry on his hard face. Mandi was the only one beside himself who bothered eating anything, and she had raw noodles and water just like he did. With a sad shake of his head, the old man closed his eyes and took a quick nap.

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Author's note: I know little about South Africa, so chances are I'm getting so many things wrong here, from names to… everything!. I just got the idea after playing Left 4 Dead 2 and watching District 9 within ten minutes of each other, so yeah. Note, this is strictly a Left 4 Dead story, and doesn't crossover with District 9. The name came from District 9's spiritual predecessor, Alive in Joburg.


	2. The Park

Left 4 Dead: Dead in Joburg

Campaign 1 – Pretoria

Part 2 – The Park

David felt a hand nudging him gently, stirring him from his nap. He opened his eyes, and once they focused his saw Hendrick looking at him. "Hey, David, come on. We're going to move." The young Afrikaner offered him a hand, pulling him to his feet. David could feel his old bones protesting, but he had lived too long and through too much to lay down and die just because a disease was ruining his homeland.

"I can't wait until we get to the helicopter. It would be good to be able to sleep for more than an hour at a time." He grinned slowly. "Besides, I've never ridden a helicopter before. It seems like something to do before you die."

Tau even managed a smile. "I'll make sure you get to ride a helicopter if it kills me, old man." Oddly, this was the first time he'd showed any sort of friendliness towards any of the other three. "Now then, the next safehouse on the map is the hospital. Mandisa, what's it going to take to get there?"

Without missing a beat, Mandi pulled the map from her backpack. "We'll have to go down Chamberlain street, and then cut across this park right here," she said, pointing at a green blotch on the map. "I don't think it should be too heavily infested, but you never know." It never hurt to be prepared. Mandi had always lived by that principle, and it had served her well over the years.

"I'm topped up on ammunition, painkillers, and medical supplies. Does anyone have any spare pipe bombs or molotovs lying around?" Hendrick asked. One of the first bits of info to go out over the radio had been that the zombies were attracted to loud noises. One of the best ways to kill a group of them was to attach a smoke detector to a pipe bomb. It was an ingenious idea, really, so the four of them had been collecting as many of the pipe bombs as they could. Hendrick knew the devices had saved their lives at least a dozen times so far.

David, after making sure he had everything he needed, put his hand on the bolt to the door leading out into the streets. "Is everyone ready then?" he asked. Getting nods in return, the elderly man opened the door and stepped into the rainy streets. The carnage was widespread even on this small street, which was littered with crashed cars and the bodies of the dead. A couple of zombies mulled about, occasionally waving angrily at the rain that was falling on them.

Since Hendrick had the most accurate gun out of the group, he squeezed off a couple of shots, picking off the half-dozen or so infected who were close enough to cause trouble with relative ease. When the zombies were all dead, the group pressed on, down the street. The streets were not crowded with cars, not like they had been in America. They'd heard via radio and word of mouth that the Americans holiday season had had the roads packed, and it made major streets complete deathtraps. Here the roads were not as tightly packed with cars, as more people walked or used mass transit.

When they reached the end of the street, they found a brick wall separating them from the park. Just down the wall a couple of yards there was a black iron gate, but an ambulance was blocking their path. "We should check it out," Mandi suggested. "There might be medical supplies inside." The others quickly agreed, and they approached the ambulance with care; there may have been a dormant infected in the back, or even in the front, immobilized by its own seatbelt.

Fortunately, when they arrived they found the ambulance was empty of any living infected. There was a body bag on a gurney in the back, and a dead paramedic in the passenger's seat, but otherwise it was empty. A quick search yielded two more medical kits they could use for later, which Tau and Mandi took for themselves. "Hey, the key's still in the ignition. We could probably move it out of the way and go through the gate," Hendrick piped in. He climbed into the cab, grabbing hold of the key and waiting to twist it.

Tau shrugged. "It couldn't hurt to try," he said. David and Mandi nodded their approval, and Hendrick turned the key. The engine made no sound, but as soon as the battery came on, so did the siren. The loud, shrill noise echoed through the streets, and the flashing lights gave away their position to anything that still had eyes. A howl rose up over the sound, and then the horde came…

It seemed like dozens of them were running out of the woodworks, coming from every doorway. A few even climbed out of wrecked cars and scrambled towards the noise. "Oh shit!" Hendrick yelled. "Come on, everyone get on top!" He scrambled out of the ambulance and climbed onto the hood, and from the hood onto the roof. Mandi and Tau both followed, though David needed to be helped up.

They made it up just barely before the horde reached them, and then they started shooting. The height advantage mattered only little, as the infected were expert climbers and were, in fact, better at it than most survivors were. No one said anything except to warn when they were reloading, which they took as little time as possible doing. At the distance they were fighting from, it was hard to miss one of the zombies who wanted so badly to beat them to a pulp.

David spied something out of the corner of his sharp eyes, and pointed towards a zombie with a morbidly long neck, its mouth burned away by its acidic bile. "Spitter!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, and just as the infected hurled its phlegm at them he and the others turned and jumped from the top of the ambulance, over the gate, and landed in the park beyond.

Hendrick screamed as he hit the ground, and scrambled out of his raincoat, throwing it to the ground. Already the acid was burning away the leather of the coat, until there was barely anything left. Spitter acid was less corrosive to human flesh, but it still hurt badly. Beyond the gate, the infected were mostly dead. The few that were left focused on attacking the ambulance's siren, hitting it until it stopped wailing. "I hate Spitters," Hendrick mumbled, mourning over the loss of his nice coat.

"I'm sure they do not care much for you either, Hendrick," Tau said, looking at the park that lay ahead. It was your typical park: lots of trees, some benches, and nice little walkways with signs that told people to stay off the grass. Any other time it would've been a nice place to go for a stroll, but now it was more important to get through it and to the next safehouse.

"Okay everyone, let's keep moving," Mandi said, taking the lead. She knew, like everyone else, that the horde always managed to find you if you stayed still. None of them knew how, but it had happened every other time they'd taken a break anywhere but one of the safehouses. Nowadays they made sure to go through an area as quickly as possible.

There were gunshots in the distance, and the occasional howl of a hunter or, even more frightening, the roar of a tank. When accompanied by the falling rain and the thunder, it made for an eerie setting. "So what do you guys think the disease is? Rabies?" Hendrick asked as they walked, to try and break the silence.

"I don't know what it is," David began, "But from what I have heard on the television and radio, it seems like the end of the world. I wonder… Do you think the four of us are immune?" He had heard the disease was airborne, and from what he saw the infected didn't bite so much as they just bunched and kicked. They didn't want to **eat** people who weren't infected, they just wanted to kill them.

"I think we are," Tau agreed. "When it first happened, one of the infected cut me with a fingernail, and that was two weeks ago. If it was transmitted through blood, I would've become one of them long ago." From what he saw, the infection only took a day to turn a perfectly healthy human into a foaming madman with an insatiable bloodlust.

Mandi remembered when she'd been in one of South Africa's national parks when it hit, working as a wilderness tour guide for bored foreigners who'd come to see Africa's wildlife. "It doesn't infect animals, from what I've seen. The infected still try and kill them, though. I saw a group of them swarm a lion and bring it down. It couldn't do anything against that many people." After that incident, she'd come home to Pretoria to make sure her boyfriend was okay. She'd never found him.

The sound of coughing quieted them all and made them stop in their tracks. They immediately started looking around for a smoke trail, a sure indicator that a Smoker was around. Tau saw it just as the infected shot its long tongue out and wrapped it around him. "GAAAH, HELP!" he yelled as he was dragged away, his arms bound by the Smoker's tongue.

"Tau! Hold on!" Mandi yelled, diving and grabbing his feet. That did little good but to slow him down, as the Smoker continued to drag them over. Hendrick raised his rifle to his shoulder and closed his eye, drawing a bead on the Smoker's head. A second later he squeezed the trigger, and with one last, weak cough it fell to the ground, dead in a puff of thick, foul-smelling smoke.

Tau himself was coughing as he stood up, unwrapping the Smoker's limp tongue from his body. "Tell me, Hendrick… Do you hate Smokers too?" he asked, a grin forming on his face. It was almost his way of saying 'thanks'.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Hendrick replied, returning Tau's grin. He reloaded his rifle, packing away the old clip to be topped off later. "I hate all the goddamn infected. Spitters the most, though," he added, holding up a finger. He'd gotten used to all the signs the "special" infected made: a gurgling noise for a Spitter, the coughing for a Smoking, growling for the Hunter… The worst two were the roar of the Tank and the soft crying of the Witch. He had nightmares about those two sounds.

The park, compared to the rest of their journey through the city, was actually rather pleasant, except for the chaotic noises in the distance. Their trip didn't take much longer, though they paused for a brief stop at some public restrooms that were still standing (though a couple of zombies nearly got the jump on them). At the opposite end of the park there was another gate, though thankfully it wasn't locked. They passed through unheeded, and from there they could see the hospital just across the street.

"Well that's a relief. I didn't expect it to be so easy," Hendrick said cheerfully. Naturally, right after those words left his lips, a deep roar erupted from the mass of wrecked cars down the street from them. "Well…" he mumbled, "I apologize for jinxing us…"

The Tank slammed one of the cars out of its way and, unfortunately, right at the survivors. They had ample time to get out of the way, and it slammed harmlessly into more cars. The four wasted no time in opening fire at the massive juggernaut. Its muscular frame almost seemed to soak up the bullets without any noticeable damage, and they certainly didn't do anything to distract it from trying to kill them. With the streets packed with cars, the survivors' one major advantage, mobility, was taken away.

"Come on, everyone! Get the to the hospital!" David yelled over the gunfire, turning that way and sprinting, still shooting while he did so. Hendrick and Mandi followed him up the front steps and through the hospital's double-doors, but Tau remained at the base of the steps, still shooting at the tank with his pistols.

"Tau! Get inside!" Mandi yelled, trying to get his attention. He turned to her for one instant, giving her a look of defiance, before he continued shooting at the tank as it charged. Just as it reached him and reared back to strike, he fired both pistols up at its head, piercing its skull. It swung as it fell to the ground, knocking him backwards and up the steps like a ragdoll, until he skidded to a halt right in front of the hospital door.

"TAU!" David and Mandi yelled in unison, running to grab the man and help him to his feet. He was still conscious, though his eyes were unfocused. He didn't appear to be bleeding, but for all they knew he'd broken any number of bones, maybe even his spine. But they couldn't leave him, no matter how badly he was hurt. Slinging his arms over their shoulders, Mandi and David carried him over to Hendrick, who was waiting by another safehouse.

"Oh shit, is he dead?" Hendrick asked, his blue eyes wide with fear. He'd always seen Tau as the strongest of them, if not mentally then physically. He pushed open the metal door leading to one of the hospital break rooms, which had also been converted into a safehouse. "Come on, there's some medical supplies inside. We'll have to see what we can do to help him." None of them had much medical knowledge, only basic first aid that they'd had to pick up quickly during the apocalypse.

They laid Tau down on one of the employee couches, though it was so short his feet hung off. "Tau? Can you hear us?" David asked, waving his hand in front of Tau's face.

The rough man blinked, then nodded. "Y-yeah… I can hear you. What happened?" he mumbled, wincing slightly in pain as he shifted to try and sit up. They kept him from doing that.

"You got hit by a tank. Can you feel everything? Your legs and arms?"

Tau nodded again. "Yes, I'm fine. I just think I got the wind knocked out of me…" From what they could see he wasn't bleeding anywhere, though when David put pressure on his stomach, the man winced. "Gaaah! Shit, it feels like my rib is broken!" he growled, gritting his teeth.

Mandi sighed. "All we can do is wrap it and give you some painkillers," she said. "Now come on, sit up. David, help me." The elderly man nodded, and then they set to work. Tau complained the entire time they wrapped his ribs, though the high-strength pain medicine they gave him afterward did wonders in calming him down. Unfortunately, he would probably be unable to move at least until nightfall.

"So we sit tight until then," Hendrick said, leaning his rifle against a cabinet. As was the case in the last safehouse, there was ample ammunition and more medical supplies, plus some food for them to subsist on for at least a day or two. There were even a couple of guns, including a nice-looking army rifle that Hendrick thought would be a good replacement for his own (it was an FN SCAR, or at least a civilian model, though he didn't know what it was called), which was starting to look shabby.

David agreed. "The Crying Ones will be less active at night… And we're almost there. I would hate to take risks now…" From the map posted on the break room wall, the evac zone was less than a couple of kilometers away; they could be there before the night was out if they left before it had been dark for too long. The three of them debated on a time to leave, and finally once they'd agreed on waiting until two hours after sunset, they each took the opportunity to get some more much-needed rest.

Author's note: Firstly, I'd like to thank DemonicK for reviewing my story! I'm certainly glad you like it, and I'm definitely glad to keep updating it! Secondly, I'd like to say that it is very fun trying to think of Crescendo Events, Finales… All kinds of scenarios as if the story were an actual campaign of Left 4 Dead. Like Left 4 Dead 2, there are five "campaigns" planned, and they will be of varying length.


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